Understanding Isotopic Fractionation in Chemical Reactions

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Isotopic fractionation is an important process which occurs during chemical reactions when the abundances of the heavy isotopes in the reactants (A) are different from the abundances of the heavy isotopes in the product (B). Isotopes of one elements vary with neutrons and atomic mass, and therefore isotopes of the light elements (H, C, N, O, S) react at different rates in chemical reactions related to different thermodynamic properties. Isotopes of the same elements have different melting points, densities, vapor pressures, diffusion coefficients, equilibrium and kinetic rate constants in reactions. This leads to isotopic separation or fractionation. Generally, fractionation is likely to occur when: compounds have a low atomic mass (Δm/m is large), large mass change between rare and common isotope, covalent bonds are broken in reaction, there is more than one oxidation state and elements/compounds have a high vapor pressure. …show more content…

The three stable oxygen isotopes 16O, 17O, and 18O will be used to explain the notation and basic definitions. The oxygen isotope with mass number 16 contains 8 protons (oxygen) and 8 neutrons and is denoted by 16O. It is by far the most abundant (99.76%) of the three stable oxygen isotopes. This isotopic differentiation is commonly expresses and described by δ. In the case of evaporation processes it is defined as the ratio of the isotope content of the liquid (solid) and of the vapour phases (Araguas-Araguas et al., 2000). The isotopic composition, δ, of a sample, determined by mass spectrometric methods, is measured with respect to a

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